The Film That Blew My Mind

TFTBMM Presents: Filmspotting - Top 5 Movies That Siskel and Ebert Got Wrong with Matt Singer Apr 15, 2024

On the heels of our conversation with Chaz Ebert discussing Life Itself, we are sharing this episode from our friends at Filmspotting. As we learned from Chaz, even Roger himself once admitted to getting one review wrong!

In this episode, critic and author Matt Singer joins Filmspotting co-hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen to consider the enduring impact of Ebert and his longtime partner Gene Siskel, and to dissect five other reviews they may have gotten wrong. Originally dropped in October, 2023, the episode followed publication of Matt’s book, “Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever”, a vivid telling of the definitive story of Siskel and Ebert and their iconic show, “At the Movies.”

Listen and subscribe to Filmspotting on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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John Cameron Mitchell on Nashville Apr 08, 2024

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For our final episode of season one, we took our show on the road to record an episode before a live audience at the Sonoma International Film Festival. John Cameron Mitchell, the ultimate multi-hyphenate and creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, joined Cooper and Tabitha on stage for a conversation about Robert Altman’s legendary Nashville. With a cast composed of Karen Black, Keith Carradine, Ronee Blakely, Lily Tomlin, Shelly Duvall, Geraldine Chaplin, Jeff Goldblum, and more, the film knits together the stories of twenty four characters as they navigate their time and place in their own, idiosyncratic ways.

John shares his own experience seeing the film, a halfway-fruitful exchange with Nashville screenwriter Joan Tewksbury, and personal encounters with Samuel Beckett and Robert Altman himself. Plus, how the scene with Keith Carradine singing the Oscar-winning song “I’m Easy” inspired parts of John’s own film Shortbus (2006), what he learned from the Sundance labs with Michelle Satter, and why bedwetters are his kind of people.

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Chaz Ebert on Life Itself Apr 01, 2024

It is hard to pinpoint when Chaz Ebert first experienced Life Itself, Steve James’s documentary about her late husband and legendary film critic, Roger Ebert. Initially conceived as a multi-year project to capture Roger’s vibrant life and career, the film also documented what would become the final weeks of Roger’s life. Film icons like Werner Herzog, Ava Duvernay, and Martin Scorsese illustrate the ways in which Roger’s work inspired them individually and impacted culture on a broad scale. Tracing Roger’s journey from cub reporter to cultural icon and devoted family man, the film is a testament to his ardently populist sensibility, larger-than-life personality, fierce love of movies, and the vigor with which he met every day even as he endured life with cancer and its effects.

In conversation with Cooper and Tabitha, Chaz reveals the one movie review Roger acknowledged he got wrong, her reluctance to continue filming as Roger’s health deteriorated, what it meant to experience the film’s premiere with an audience at Sundance, and how their shared concern for humanity continues to inspire her work today.

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Steve Buscemi on Fat City Mar 25, 2024

As an NYFD firefighter working the overnight shift at Engine Company 55, Steve Buscemi popped a VHS tape into the station’s player and experienced John Huston’s Fat City for the first time. Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by its author Leonard Gardner, the film centers around boxing and life in the hard-scrabble central California town of Stockton. Former champ Tully (Stacy Keach) sets his sights on returning to the ring when he meets Ernie (Jeff Bridges), an eighteen-year-old who he takes under his wing. As their friendship and rivalry unfold, we meet the sherry-loving Ooma (Susan Tyrell), Ernie’s pregnant girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark), and boxing manager Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto), all of whom round out Huston’s tale of hope, desperation, and dignity.

We learn about Steve’s real-life encounter with Susan Tyrell, what he learned from his time as a teenage usher at the Belair Theater in Valley Stream, NY, and how Fat City inspired his own directorial debut, Trees Lounge.

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Chai Vasarhelyi on In This World Feb 19, 2024

From El Capitan in Yosemite to Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand and Meru Peak in the Indian Himalayas, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (her partner in filmmaking and in life) have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide with intimate, non-fiction portrayals of outdoor athletes pushing themselves to extremes. Free Solo, their 2018 film, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Their first scripted project, Nyad, boasts Oscar-nominated performances from Annette Benning and Jodie Foster.

The film that blew Chai’s mind? Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 In This World, which blurs the lines of fiction and documentary to convey the story of an Afghani boy’s journey from a Pakistani refugee camp to London. She joins Cooper and Tabitha to explore the finer points of Winterbottom’s film and dives into questions of truth vs fiction, the nuances of working with real-life characters, and how the relationships she cultivates with her participants are essential to her filmmaking craft.

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Ethan Hawke on Reds Feb 12, 2024

As an 18-year-old on the verge of breakout success, Ethan Hawke encountered Reds for the first time. The epic love story and historical drama brings us writer/activist Jack Reed and journalist Louise Bryant in the midst of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the birth of the socialist party in the U.S. Directed by, co-written by, and starring Warren Beatty, Reds is famous for extraordinary performances from Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton, and Edward Hermann. The film earned Beatty Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.

Ethan, Tabitha, and Cooper get into film craft, authenticity, feminism, collaboration, creativity, and Ethan's outgoing message on his answering machine circa 1990. Plus, what makes Reds one of Ethan's all time favorites.

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Ira Sachs on Taxi Zum Klo Feb 05, 2024

Veteran independent filmmaker Ira Sachs is known for a body of work marked by beauty, nuance, and intimate portrayals of people and their emotional lives. He is driven, he says, by a deep curiosity about freedom and its limits - both in his characters and in filmmaking itself. This is part of the reason why Taxi Zum Klo (Taxi to the Toilet), a radical portrait of personal and sexual freedom, blew his mind. The semi-autobiographical story of writer/director/star Frank Ripploh takes us into his separate lives - devoted school teacher by day and enthusiastic cruiser of Berlin’s gay scene by night. Explicit and bold, it was hailed by the Village Voice as “the first masterpiece about the mainstream of male gay life,” when it premiered in the early 1980’s.

We learn how Ira discovered the film, despite the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find today, and how it inspires him to push the boundaries of his own work. Plus, Cooper shares his experience seeing Taxi Zum Klo when it played the New York Film Festival in 1981, and Tabitha dives into questions about the value of art as a provocation.

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Jinkx Monsoon on All About Eve Jan 29, 2024

Cabaret icon, RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar, acclaimed actress and vocalist, the “internationally tolerated” Jinkx Monsoon joins Cooper and Tabitha to explore the many layers of Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 backstage theater drama All About Eve. Starring Bette Davis in the role that came to define her career, and Ann Baxter, the multiple Oscars-winning film is iconic for its witty dialogue and its scathing take on the ruthless nature of show business.

Jinkx shares how Davis’s performance inspires her own work, what the movie has to say about the experience of female performers in a youth-obsessed industry, and the love story playing out off screen between Davis and co-star Gary Merrill. We learn all about Jinkx's Portland, Oregon childhood, the innate roots of her fabulosity, and what keeps her spinning the golden threads of performing on stages around the world.

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Jared Hess on Rad Jan 22, 2024

Twenty years ago, one of the most indelible movie characters of recent decades was born when Napoleon Dynamite premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. From Vote for Pedro T-shirts to the pet llama Tina (aka: “Fat Lard”) and a seriously iconic dance number, Napoleon Dynamite has earned a top slot in the pop culture canon of the 21st century. This week, Cooper and Tabitha speak with Jared Hess who, together with his co-writer and wife Jerusha Hess, is the force behind Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre (co-written with Mike White), Masterminds, and more.

Jared shares his deep love for Hal Needham’s Rad (1988), a classic ‘80’s teen flick about competitive BMX racing and a bike battle between local kids and the professional riders who come to town. We learn a bit about director Hal Needham, the highest paid stunt double of his time who directed action-packed classics like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Cannonball Run (1981). Plus, how Rad’s soundtrack featuring The Sparks, opening sequence cinematography by Robert Schwartzman, and a curious activity dubbed “ass-sliding” make this a feel-good sports movie for kids of any generation.

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Willem Dafoe on Onibaba Jan 15, 2024

Willem Dafoe joins Tabitha and Cooper to share Onibaba, the 1964 film by the prolific and pioneering Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindô. Literally translated as “Demon Hag”, Onibaba is a tale of a mother and daughter-in-law’s murderous quest for survival in the midst of Japan’s medieval civil war. When a man returning from war enters the picture and latent primal urges emerge, all hell breaks loose. The striking black-and-white imagery and percussive soundtrack make for a wildly kinetic ride that is both terrifying and delightful .

As Willem shares what he loves about this classic of the Japanese New Wave, we also learn a bit about Kaneto Shindo’s extraordinary life, art, and career. Plus, what it is about making film and theater that keeps him inspired, the importance of being in the moment, and the visceral power of cinematic storytelling.

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Kirsten Johnson on All That Jazz Jan 08, 2024

Director and legendary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson is known for nonfiction work that is inventive, artful, expressive, and maximal. The same can be said of the film that blew her mind -- Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. The semi-autobiographical film brings us Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a peripatetic creative force working simultaneously to mount a major Broadway production and complete post-production on a feature film, all while maintaining a lifestyle fueled by cigarettes, pills, one-night stands, and Visine, and still finding time for his adoring 12-year old daughter, Michelle.We learn why the iconic film first transfixed Kirsten, and how she continues to be inspired by Fosse’s ingenious use of dance, documentary, theater, music, and more. Cooper shares his personal ties to the film, calling on his days in New York’s theater scene of the 1970s. And Tabitha (a.k.a. Wife of Kirsten) does her level best to maintain her professional distance as the conversation unfolds.

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Patricia Clarkson on A Woman Under the Influence Dec 18, 2023

Celebrated for bringing depth and nuance to roles ranging from a drug-addicted art dealer (High Art, Lisa Cholodenko, 1998), to a dying mother meeting her daughter for the first time (Monica, Andrea Pallaoro, 2023), Patricia Clarkson is no stranger to complex emotional terrain. Perhaps that is why she feels somewhat comfortable in the volatile world of A Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavettes’ 1974 masterpiece. The film centers around Mabel Longhetti, brilliantly rendered by Gena Rowlands, as a deeply loving, profoundly unstable housewife and mother of three.

We explore the extraordinary power and nuance of Rowland’s performance, the layered collaboration of Cassavettes, Rowlands, and Falk, and learn the extent to which the film was indeed a family affair. For this iconic film, we could not ask for a better guide than the woman Cooper once dubbed the “Unofficial Queen of Sundance”, Patricia Clarkson.

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Michael Showalter on Crossing Delancey Dec 11, 2023

From his first viewing at the Angelika as a freshman at NYU, Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 rom-com Crossing Delancey blew Michael Showalter’s mind. In this episode Michael shares how and why the movie made a lasting mark and how it continues to influence his work today. Adapted by Susan Sandler from her play of the same title, this is the story of Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving), a nice Jewish girl with roots in Manhattan’s Lower East Side but now living uptown with literary-adjacent aspirations. Sam Posner (Peter Reigart) is a purveyor of pickles, with a shop down the street from Izzy’s grandmother’s apartment.

We learn how the film’s spot-on portrayal of 1980s city living with characters who exist in coffee shops and bars and bookstores, and apartments, resonated with the life 18-year-old Michael imagined for himself. As he unpacks what makes this a rom-com classic, co-hosts Cooper and Tabitha spark a debate around the off-screen future for Sam and Izzy, and where they might be today.

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Eva Longoria on Casino Dec 04, 2023

From her feature film directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, to her career-launching turn as Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria has a thing for characters - and people - who get things done. Case in point, Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro), the central character in Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995) who brings hard-won street smarts and ruthless clarity to his job as casino boss. He is less clear-eyed when it comes to his hustler-addict wife (Sharon Stone) and unhinged mafioso best friend (Joe Pesci), both of whom sow chaos with every move.

Eva takes us inside the film that brings us the violent, stylish, and desperate world of 1970’s Vegas. We learn how Scorsese’s filmmaking in Casino inspired many of the techniques she used in Flamin’ Hot, how she cut her directing chops, and the parallels she sees between her own Texican heritage and the Italian American experiences at the center of so many of Scorsese’s films.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Encanto Nov 27, 2023

Time traveling hitman, love-struck greeting card writer, notorious whistleblower, and an alien passing as a human boy are just a few of the characters Joseph Gordon-Levitt has brought to life. His extraordinary range as an actor is matched by his taste in films, as evidenced by his choice of Disney’s Encanto as the film that blew his mind. From the way it subverts storytelling traditions to its layered and lyrical songs, Joe shares all the reasons why Encanto is a favorite with his young family and what it has to say about honesty as the greatest superpower of all.

Plus, zip-lining as an antidote to grief, Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian “Harrison Bergeron”, and the role that Sundance has played in Joe’s own life.

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Sterlin Harjo on The Long Goodbye Nov 20, 2023

When trailblazing Native media maker Sterlin Harjo first experienced Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye one solitary day during the pandemic, he says it felt as if he was floating through the film. Floaty and dark, Altman’s 1973 film adaptation of the 1953 book by Raymond Chandler delivers a wry, wise-cracking Elliot Gould as detective Philip Marlowe and takes place in a Los Angeles reshaped by the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Cueing off The Long Goodbye, Sterlin makes a case for treating background as foreground and for storytelling that emphasizes an ensemble over a single hero.

From his family’s famous spaghetti to the funeral parlor his auntie called home, we learn all about the people and the place that made Sterlin the filmmaker he is today. Plus, how Oklahoma Noir may well be the genre we didn’t know we were missing.

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Bridget Everett on The Sound of Music Nov 13, 2023

Comedienne, chanteuse, star, co-writer, and executive producer of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, and our favorite Manhattan, Kansas native, Bridget Everett shares the beloved classic, The Sound of Music. From watching the story of the von Trapps as the youngest of six kids, to how she sees it through the lens of her life and work today, Bridget dives deep into the timeless resonance of the movie and its music. We learn of her admiration for the naturalistic musicality of the film, and why Dame Julie Andrews is one of her favorite voices of all time.

Plus, her love of Barry Manilow, why co-host John Cooper marched down Santa Monica Boulevard in heels, and what Reverend Mother and Ad-Rock have in common.

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Ryan Coogler on Un Prophéte Nov 06, 2023

The cinematic force that is Ryan Coogler brings us deep into Jacques Audiard’s masterful, layered Un Prophéte. When Malik, an Algerian man, arrives to serve his sentence in a French prison, he must rely upon his capacity for observation and learning to navigate the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, language, and power that define life behind these particular bars. Ryan touches on why this film is often compared to The Godfather, and describes Malik, played by the fiercely intense Tahar Rahmin as, “the greatest learner ever put to screen.”

We hear about Ryan’s formative years as a film student at U.S.C., his first visit to the Cannes Film Festival, and how Alejandro Iñárritu’s Amores Perros and Fernando Merielles and Katia Lund’s City of God have also inspired him along the way.

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Jon Hamm on Cinema Paradiso Oct 30, 2023

A guest who needs no introduction, Jon Hamm, dives into the 1988 Italian film, Cinema Paradiso, directed by Guiseppe Tornatore. The film begins when Salvatore di Vita, a superstar filmmaker in Rome, recalls his childhood in a small Sicilian village during the aftermath of World War II. With his father lost at war, young Salvatore forms a deep friendship with Alberto, the projectionist at the local cinema, and falls in love with film.

As a teenager growing up in St. Louis, Jon’s moviegoing was primarily driven by his burning desire to escape the house. Nevertheless, Cinema Paradiso captured his imagination and has continued to resonate with him throughout his life. We also learn how Silence of the Lambs left a bloody impression, and the Cub Scout lesson that fuels his stratospheric career.

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Molly Shannon on The Wizard of Oz Oct 23, 2023

Everyone’s favorite “Superstar”, Molly Shannon, shares why and how Victor Fleming’s 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz has blown her mind. From her first viewing at age four, to her star turn as Dorothy in Cleveland’s Heights Youth Theater production, The Wizard of Oz is a metaphorical reflection of many of Molly’s life experiences. We hear from her about the iconic performances by Judy Garland as Dorothy and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West, an only-in-Hollywood moment at an L.A. grocery store, and art as a conduit to healing.

The Wizard of Oz aired on network television every December from 1959-1991, becoming a holiday tradition for generations of Americans. Millions of us know this film by heart, but Molly’s story is unique in her deeply personal connections to the movie’s themes of home and belonging, friendship, self-determination, and what we hope to find over the rainbow.

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Gregg Araki on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me Oct 23, 2023

Iconic filmmaker Gregg Araki brings us into the singular, surreal world of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Universally panned when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992, the film has since become a cult classic. Starring Sheryl Lee and Kyle McClachlan, with cameos from David Bowie and Harry Dean Stanton, the film is Lynch’s answer to the question posed by his Twin Peaks television series: Who killed Laura Palmer? Gregg makes the case for the movie as an uncompromising representation of Lynch’s genius, and as being distinct among his films for its emotional resonance.

We learn about Gregg’s early influences, from graphic novels to the Sex Pistols and Rainer Fassbinder, and how the commercial bomb of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me intersected with his own first film, The Living End. Plus, how copy machines fueled the early days of American independent film.

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Trailer Oct 10, 2023

Filmmakers, actors, and creators of all kinds answer one simple question: What is a film that blew your mind?!

No film is off limits as each episode centers around one guest and one film that has had a profound impact on their life, work, and art. Co-hosts John Cooper and Tabitha Jackson, former directors of the Sundance Film Festival, call upon decades at the forefront of independent film to bring their insider knowledge, lived experiences, and signature chemistry to conversations that dive straight into the heart and soul of cinema.

From Molly Shannon on The Wizard of Oz, and Jon Hamm on Cinema Paradiso, to Ryan Coogler on Un Prophete, and Jinkx Monsoon on the Hollywood classic All About Eve, each episode explores a film that has shaped one of the most dynamic artists working today.

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